1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to droplet ejecting apparatus, a droplet adherence preventing method, and a cleaning method for cleaning a recording medium carrier roller.
2. Description of the Related Art
An ink jet printer is generally provided with one or plural ink jet heads discharging ink droplets onto paper conveyed in a predetermined direction so as to print, and carrier rollers conveying the paper printed with an image out of the ink jet head.
When high-speed printing is performed by such an ink jet printer, the paper is conveyed out of the ink jet head by the carrier rollers before the ink discharged on the paper is sufficiently dried or fixed. Accordingly, there is a problem that an imaged formed on the paper smudges by ink being transferred from the paper to the image-side roller of the carrier rollers that contacts with the image surface of the paper, or by retransfer of ink adhered onto the carrier rollers back onto the paper.
Particularly, in ink jet printers having a paper-reversing double side-printing mechanism, in which paper is reversed after printing an image on one side thereof and then another image is printed on the opposite side thereof, since the carrier rollers also function as paper reversing rollers reversing the paper, a nip pressure at the carrier rollers is higher. Accordingly, a serious problem of ink contamination being generated and accumulated on the image-side roller occurs.
In order to solve the above problem, it has been proposed to provide a cleaning device cleaning the surface of the carrier rollers.
However, the proposed cleaning device only includes cleaning members such as a piece of non-woven cloth, felt, or sand paper that are pressed onto the carrier roller or carrier belt conveying printed paper so as to mechanically remove ink adhering to the surface thereof.
Accordingly, since the removed ink is accumulated in the cleaning member after prolonged use, the cleaning performance of the cleaning member can not be preserved for a long time.